WRT54G v3 connection resets/lag...

I'm having a problem where all my connections seem like they're dropping and resetting (or lagging) when I'm eating bandwidth, having torrents going, or playing networked games.

Torrent connections will peter down to 0k/s and restart. Game connections will freeze for 30-45 seconds and pick back up (sometimes). SSH connections will freeze for 30 seconds or so. During this 'downtime' I'll get the old 'page cannot be displayed' with IE.

The router in question has been sitting on the carpet and was noticably hot until about 2 days ago before I moved it onto a shelf, and placed it vertical to help with cooling. It seemed to help a little bit but going full tilt with my connections again, this problem still seems to occur every few minutes. I'm a little worried I might've weakened the chips with the heat... it feels cool with it's new placement now.

I'd really like to hold onto this router since it's one of the more desired revs (I think?) but I'm not too keen on hacking a fan into it, as fun as it sounds. This router is only about a year old, and my previous BEFW11S4 had close to the same problem after a year before I junked it.

Next step for me is to hook my comp directly to the cable modem to ensure it isn't my ISP throttling my connections or the cable modem going wonky, but any recommendations on software/firmware that might log or help diagnose the problem before I give up on her?

hey, thanks for the response. i just came back to this thread since i'm still having the problems after the below:

since my last post, i ended up connecting my computer to the cable modem directly (no router) and found out the connection didn't drop or have any problems during a 2 hour gaming session, which usually dies at least 4-5+ times during that period. so it seemed like the router, i broke down and went out and got a WRT54G v5 (against my and the forum's better judgment) and i found that i'm still having the EXACT same problem. the funny thing is, the network 'freezes' on this computer, but still responds fine through wireless on my laptop and other computer using wireless. it's not the nic card (onboard mobo) on this machine because i've been having the problem for a few months now and i just upgraded the mobo last month, and have had the same problems between the two. i've tried setting this computer to use dhcp instead of a static ip (for port forwarding purposes...) no change, still drops.

so, today i've unhooked the v5 and hooked my v3 back up to let it have another go... i've got the hyperwrt thibor 14 in, adjusted the max connections from 2048 -> 4096, and added the lines suggested to the startup script... i'll see how it goes, and try to check the other wired machine i have during a 'freeze' to see if the other machine still responds.

nothing like losing a game for your team when you're holding the flag, it's 7-7 and you end up freezing for an entire minute. *sighs*